Posted: April 28th, 2015

Medical family tree (Diabetes)

Medical family tree (Diabetes)

Order Description

Case Study
Knowledge of family members’ medical problems in the past can assist in helping today’s family members live better lives.  Your tasks is to prepare a graphical representation of your personal family medical tree through information gathering, analyse the results and present this analysis in a brief report.  You will also be required to make a presentation to the class.

Trace your family medical tree

Start with the immediate family – siblings, parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts.  Your chart should have at least three generations.  Most important are first-degree relatives (parents and siblings who share 50% of your genes) and then second degree relatives (grandparents, aunts and uncles who share 25% of your genes).

Key information to obtain from immediate family members:

•    Date of birth and date of death.  If the person is not available for more accurate details an approximation of age of living relatives and age at death of deceased relatives is sufficient).
•    Cause of death and any other known additional significant illnesses such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease that the person may have been treated for during their lifetime.
•    Current illnesses for living relatives and the age when the illness was first diagnosed.
•    Lifestyle habits that may have affected development of a condition (e.g. smoking, overweight, lack of exercise, occupation).

You then need to develop a graphical representation of your family tree.  The graphical representation of the family may be done in Microsoft Word or Microsoft Excel.  When developing the tree use squares to represent the males in your family and circles for females.  You will also need to use colour coding or symbols to highlight disease patterns.  For example a heart symbol for family members with heart disease.

The following links provide you with examples of graphical representation of family medical trees.
http://www.celebritydiagnosis.com/2010/05/lady-gagas-family-history-and-testing-for-lupus/
http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/genogram

A sample tree has also been provided on the Blackboard site for this unit.

Analysing the family medical tree

Once you have your graphical representation, you need to analyse the information you have collected and write a brief report (1000 words).  The analysis should look for any patterns or trends.  For example:

•    Do two or more relatives have the same disease?
•    Is there any evidence of hereditary diseases?
•    Do you see any lifestyle choices and consequences for your relatives?  If so which ones?
•    Do you think your current lifestyle choices combined with your genetic history will increase your likelihood for development of a disease?  Why or why not?

To respect confidentiality, please be aware that each students report will be kept confidential.  Information will only be shared if they choose to share it or release it to other students.  In addition, you can further confidentialise your tree by providing pseudonyms for family members or using generic terminology such as grandparent 1, sibling 1 etc (or something similar).

Presentation:
The final task will be in week 13 to provide a 5 minute presentation to the rest of the class.

The purpose of the presentation is for you to share with the class your experiences in developing the family medical tree.  What you need to cover in the presentation is:
•    Difficulties you encountered in gathering information from family members, such as:
o    Accessing relatives to gather the information
o    Concerns over confidentiality
o    Understanding the disease patterns and processes
•    How has the process changed your view of the importance of health information?
•    Will you continue to develop the family medical tree?  Justify your response.

1-6
Family Medical Tree:
The graphical representation can be developed in Microsoft Word or Microsoft Excel.

Family Medical Tree Analysis Report

The report should be 1000 words.  You are allowed +/-10% for the word count without penalty. You must put the TOTAL word count for your assessment item on the title page. The word count includes ALL the words in the body of the text, including referencing in the text and subheadings. It does not include the words on the title page or any attachments/appendices.

Formatting the Report
Here is some information about how to present your report. Failure to follow these guidelines will result in reduced grades.
•    12 point Times New Roman or 11 point Arial
•    double-spaced
•    page margins must be ‘normal’ or at least 2.54cm on each sides
•    a title page which must include the following…
o    your name and student number
o    the unit name and unit coordinator’s name
o    the title of your assignment (Assessment 2: Family Medical Tree)
o    the TOTAL word count
•    your name and student number must in the header
•    page numbers must be inserted in the bottom right corner of each page

Presentation
Your presentation will be no longer than 5 minutes in length. A handout of the slides should be provided to your lecturer at the start of the presentation.   Please ensure you use a presentation tool that is compatible with the QUT environment (e.g. Powerpoint).

40% of semester total
Presentations:  Week  13 during class, Thursday May 28
Report:  End of Week 12  Sunday May  24, 2015
Submission for the report and graphical presentation of the family medical tree is online via the Blackboard site for this unit.
Individual
Students will be provided with written feedback via the criteria marking sheet and also detailed comments on an annotated copy of the electronic document.
The criteria marking sheet is a learning tool. Please ensure you have reviewed the document prior to beginning your piece of assessment to identify the key areas of focus for this item of assessment. The marking criteria can be found under the assessment tab on Blackboard.